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90A chilly, fascinating thriller at odds with itself.
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Sep 8, 201185Contagion's restraint is marred by one element - Alan Krumwiede, the San Francisco-based activist blogger played by Jude Law, a conspiracy theorist who wields claims about uncovering the truth like a blunt instrument intended to menace.
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83The film is enthralling, even as the tale becomes more and more dire, with scores of millions dead and societal upheaval imminent. The circumstances depicted in Contagion are terrifying, but the power with which the film is made blends the horror, as only the best art can, with beauty.
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83Here's a scare-the-crap-out-of-you medical thriller about a viral pandemic that will have the immediate post-screening effect of causing a handwashing stampede.
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80A starkly effective ensemble drama which could well do for the sniffles what Jaws did for great whites.
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80Contagion is serious, precise, frightening, emotionally enveloping.
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Sep 10, 201180If Contagion is a "horror movie," as Soderbergh has described it, then you can think of it as the most believable zombie movie ever made.
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80The rush of A-listers combined with apocalyptic dread creates its own kind of dizzy pleasure: Who's going down next on this Poseidon Adventure?
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80Soderbergh's treatment of the Internet turns out to be the most provocative aspect of Contagion. Like the virus, which destroys any cell it encounters, misinformation spreads rapidly online and tends to cancel out information that might save people.
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80Soderbergh's smart, spooky thriller about a thicket of contemporary plagues - a killer virus, rampaging fear, an unscrupulous blogger - is as ruthlessly effective as the malady at its cool, cool center.
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80All are good, Damon in particular, but there are so many of them we don't see anyone for very long at one stretch. And all are given at least some bad material to work with before the movie is over. For the most part, they make the best of it.
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Sep 6, 201180If Contagion truly is the first leg of Soderbergh's retirement victory lap, this harrowing film is a potent reminder of what we stand to lose.
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80This is Steven Soderbergh at his best delivering a gripping, chilling and powerful movie experience that will have audiences talking (and freaking out).
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75Contagion is the best movie made to date about an epidemic/pandemic.
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75The irony of this film is that it's all about how we need to come together to conquer a calamity that pushes us apart.
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75Arriving two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a serious all-star thriller about the rapid worldwide spread of a killer virus that's easily the scariest of the disaster films that have followed the attack.
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75Contagion isn't meant to provide delicious roller-coaster chills. Released two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it's a film meant to scare the bejesus out of us.
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75A film for anyone who enjoys an intelligent thriller, but for illness phobes this movie is a special pleasure in that it presses all the right fear buttons even as it validates a very particular vision of reality.
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75As a filmmaker Soderbergh requires nothing more of us than a willingness to enjoy ourselves. He had fun. Why shouldn't we? With Contagion, the fun begins with a cough.
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75By the time this globe-hopping, movie-star-crammed disaster saga - directed with petrifying efficiency by Steven Soderbergh - comes full circle, you'll never want to touch a subway pole or elevator button or ATM again.
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75He's the anti-Michael Bay, the un-Roland Emmerich. No fake-documentary "realism" here; Soderbergh values the silence before the storm, or a hushed two-person encounter in which one or both parties are concealing something.
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75Contagion may be the most expensive public-service ad ever filmed, but it's also a surprisingly light-on-its-feet action thriller.
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75Though the movie short-changes us emotionally, it delivers a credible, disheartening picture of greed and panic.
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75Soderbergh creates an unnerving mosaic from the smaller pieces, a vision of a world that's simultaneously tightly knit, delicately balanced, and prone to breakdown, whether due to disease, bad ideas, or unenlightened self-interest.
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75One aspect of the film is befuddling. Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) is a popular blogger with conspiracy theories about the government's ties with drug companies. His concerns are ominous but unfocused. Does he think drug companies encourage viruses? The blogger subplot doesn't interact clearly with the main story lines and functions mostly as an alarming but vague distraction.
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70Like much of Soderbergh's recent work, Contagion feels a little sterile, more like a cinematic exercise than something with blood pumping through it. It's certainly high-minded - it might be the most high-minded disaster movie ever made.
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70This may not fit any conventional definition of entertainment, but it certainly keeps your eyes on the screen.
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70For a good hour, a very good first hour, the film efficiently accumulates small, terrifying incidents and images.
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70The pressure cooker plot calls for intense performances all around but first among equals are Winslet and Ehle.
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63While potent and well-paced, Contagion doesn't come together as the fearsome bio-thriller it starts out to be. But it may make audiences twitchy about the guy coughing in the next row.